SEATTLE — The Calgary Flames took a lot of shots against the Edmonton Oilers.
Goals, though, were harder to come by in their 2-1 loss on Tuesday night.
That’s become something of a theme for the Flames this year. It’s counterintuitive, really.
In games where the Flames have taken 40 or more shots, they’ve gone 3-7-1 and are averaging 2.45 goals per game.
The Flames aren’t about to change their philosophy, though. They’re a high shot volume team, and they’re sticking to that.
“Yeah at the end of the day, the goalie has to make a save,” said Flames winger Tyler Toffoli, who saw a nice effort bounce off the post against the Oilers. “The more shots you’re getting, you want to make them high quality but at the same time if you’re getting to the net there are going to be rebounds and there’s going to be stuff lying in front and that’s where you capitalize.
“Especially towards the end of the year, that’s where most of the goals are scored, it’s in front of the net.”
That did, in general, seem to be the Flames players’ main takeaway from Tuesday’s disappointing loss to the Oilers.
There was a lot to like about their performance and firing 47 shots at the opposition goaltender is never a bad thing. It’s something Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft himself acknowledged. It’s not like the Flames’ strategy of taking lots of shots is a secret.
“Part of their gameplan, they’ll shoot from the centre ice line just to bump up their shot-volume metrics, or whatever it is,” Woodcroft said. “But it’s meant to kind of put you on the back foot and spend a little bit more time in the zone.”
The Flames themselves acknowledged Wednesday that they might have made life a little too easy for Oilers shot-stopper Stuart Skinner. That’s not taking anything away from Skinner, who played well, but the Flames know they needed to generate more traffic to make his job harder.
“I think overall the performance was there, a lot of good efforts, but their goalie, I think he made some good saves but saw the puck a lot. That’s something we’ve got to clean up and be more hungry in front of the net and be more in front,” said Flames centre Elias Lindholm. “I think, you know, a lot of shots are just easy saves for goalies, especially when you don’t have a guy in front, so just be more hungry for rebounds and put those in the net.”
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The Flames have done a good job putting the puck on net this year. They’re currently sitting fifth in the NHL with 34.7 shots per game.
That’s encouraging and it shows they’re getting chances.
Not all shots are created equally, though, and the Flames want better than what they got on Tuesday night against the Oilers.
“I think a lot of the shots we got, they weren’t necessarily hard stops for him to make,” Toffoli said. “We’ve definitely got to do a better job and I think if we do that we’re going to create some more goals.”
BROTHERLY LOVE
Flames defenceman Chris Tanev had bigger things on his mind on Wednesday morning than any sort of sibling rivalry with his brother Brandon, who plays for the Seattle Kraken.
Sure, the two teams were set to square off on Wednesday night.
And yes, Brandon’s teams do hold a 9-2-0 record against Chris’s teams in head-to-head matchups throughout their NHL careers.
But there’d been no trash-talk on Wednesday morning and the Flames d-man was much more concerned with getting his team back on track after Tuesday night’s loss.
“He hasn’t (talked any trash) today, so hopefully we win today like we were winning late last game and lost in regulation,” Tanev said. “Those are the things we need to do better. I would love to come out here and say I worked my nuts off and we beat Seattle tonight.”
Twitter: @DannyAustin_9
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